Southward from Peru marched the bold Valdivia with two hundred Spaniards at his back. With them as aids to conquest was brought a considerable force of Peruvians; also priests and women, for he proposed to settle and hold the land as his own after he had conquered it. Six hundred miles southward he went, fighting the hostile natives at every step, and on the 14th of February, 1541, stopped and laid the foundations of a town which he named St. Jago. This still stands as the modern Santiago, a city of three hundred thousand souls.
We do not propose to tell the story of Valdivia’s wars with the many tribes of Chili. He was in that land nine years before his conquests brought him to the Biobio and the land of the Araucanians, with whom alone we are concerned. On the coast near the mouth of this river he founded a new town, which he named Concepcion, and made this the basis of an invasion of the land of the Araucanians, whom he proposed to subdue.
As it happened, the Araucanian leader at this time was a man with the body of a giant and the soul of a dwarf. He timidly kept out of the way of the Spaniards until they had overrun most of the country, built towns and forts, and had reason to believe that the whole of Chili was theirs. Valdivia went on founding cities until he had seven in all, and gave himself the proud title of the Marquis of Arauco, fancying that he was lord and master of the Araucanians. He was too hasty; Arauco was not yet his.
A new state of affairs began when the Araucanians, disgusted with the timid policy of their leader, chose a bolder man, named Caupolican, as their toqui, or head chief. A daring and able man, the new toqui soon taught the Spaniards a lesson. He began with an attack on their forts. At one of these, named Arauco, the invaders had eighty Indians employed in bringing them forage for their horses. The wily Caupolican replaced these laborers by eighty of his own warriors, who hid their arms in the bundles of hay they carried. On reaching the fort they were to attack the guards and hold the gates till their ambushed comrades could come to their aid.
This device failed, the garrison attacking and driving back the forage-bearers before Caupolican could reach the place. Foiled in this, he made a fierce assault upon the fort, but the fire of eighty cannons proved too much for Indian means of defence, and the assailants were forced to draw back and convert their assault into a siege. This did not continue long before the Spaniards found themselves in peril of starvation. Vainly they sallied out on their assailants, who were not to be driven off; and finally, hopeless of holding the fort, the beleaguered garrison cut its way by a sudden night attack through the besieging lines and retired to the neighboring fort of Puren. A similar result took place at another fort called Tucapel, its garrison also seeking a refuge at Puren.